Writing about the food, farmers, fishermen, and folk of Long Island's North Fork.

February 2016

02/22/2016

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO | Frank Emmett and his wife, Colleen with one of the many creatures, great and small, sharing their home on Baldwin Road.

Published in the Shelter Island Reporter on February 4, 2016

Frank Emmett has lived on Shelter Island with his wife, Colleen Smith, for 24 years. But when he speaks, you’re reminded that although Frank is every inch an Islander, he learned to talk elsewhere.

A much-loved teacher for 23 years at the Shelter Island School, Frank was president of the teachers union for seven years, has worked summers as a purser for the North Ferry since 2004, currently teaches 10th grade English at Ross School and is general manager of the Bucks, Shelter Island’s Hamptons Collegiate Baseball League team. If he hasn’t already, he may soon ask you to consider housing a shortstop or pitcher in your spare bedroom this summer.Frank was born in Keighley, West Yorkshire, England, an area known for beautiful moorland and the textile manufacturing industry that is now mostly gone. His parents both left school at 15 to work.

Frank attended Keighley Boys Grammar School and then became the first person in his family to attend college when he went to the University of Exeter in 1969 to study English and American Studies.

“The faculty thought I was insular in my attitudes,” he said. “They said, ‘You need to see the world and go to America.’”

In 1972, Frank left England to get a doctorate in English at SUNY Buffalo with the help of a Fulbright grant. He did enough coursework to be granted a master’s degree years later and it took him until 2009 to get the Ph.D, but he helped start a Buffalo institution called Everyone’s Bookstore. Still independent, it is now called Talking Leaves and owned by one of Frank’s co-founders.

On St. Patrick’s Day, 1975, Frank met a Buffalo nursing student named Colleen Smith, when her date stood her up. A mutual friend said, “Frank’s not doing anything, why don’t you ask him?” Although neither owned a car, somehow they ended up at Niagara Falls. “Love at first sight,” Frank said.

A year later the couple moved to Bar Harbor, Maine and got married. But Frank’s student visa was about to expire, so they moved to England and settled in York, where Colleen worked as a nurse. Frank got involved with the York Community Council disability rights action group, working on an award-winning initiative to provide access to theaters for disabled people, an effort that pioneered handicapped-access improvements across Britain.

After a few years in England, Colleen had enough of the weather; they moved to the Virgin Islands, where Frank began to think of teaching. He worked as a hotel manager while he got his teacher’s certification at the University of the Virgin Islands and began teaching kindergarten.

In 1986, during their time in the Caribbean, their son Joseph was born. The family lived in “a Puerto Rican prefab house,” Frank said. Joey was about 3 years old when Hurricane Hugo, a category 4 storm, struck the Virgin Islands. The family took shelter for 10 hours with friends who lived on a nearby hill.

“I used my machete to hack my way back to the house,” Frank said. “It was perfect. Colleen had complained before the storm that the door would stick. It didn’t stick anymore.”

In 1992, they decided it was time for their young family to live closer to grandparents. Colleen’s parents lived in Southold and when Frank was offered a job teaching at the Shelter Island School, he jumped at it.

The transition from life in the Virgin Islands — populous, busy, and warm all year round — to Shelter Island was a shock for the whole family.Frank said that he himself was a bit of a shock for the Shelter Island School community. His first kindergarten class included Jimbo Theinert, who went home after the first day, impressed with Frank’s thick, Yorkshire accent and reportedly said, “Mom, I don’t think my teacher speaks English.”

Joey Emmett’s first grade class included Jimbo’s brother, Joey Theinert, and the two Joeys formed a friendship so enduring that they later vowed to be the best man at each other’s weddings. When Joey was killed serving in the Army in Afghanistan, his family kept his promise, traveling to England to stand up at Joey Emmett’s wedding in Joey Theinert’s place.

Although Frank had taught in the Virgin Islands for six years before coming to Shelter Island, he found deeper satisfaction teaching here. “You see the kids growing and they are always yours,” he said. “That’s a Shelter Island thing.”

Frank taught kindergarten for 11 years and then moved to 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade English language arts and social studies. He employed an unusual approach to teaching the American Revolution, “from the British perspective,” and enjoyed telling his classes: “Oh please, let’s call it the rebellion of King George’s ungrateful children.”

During the years Frank taught kindergarten, he collected and stored items the children brought in for “sharing time.” An eclectic assortment that included numerous seashells and a bloody duck’s wing from a bird shot by a proud child’s father, Frank began to package the items and present them to the children along with a short speech at their high school graduation years later, a practice that became a graduation tradition.

“When I came to the end of the kindergarten stuff, I had to retire,” Frank said. “It just felt like the right time.”

In 2004, Frank began working for the North Ferry as a purser in the summer, as a complement to teaching, and work he continues to enjoy after his retirement from the Shelter Island School. “You see humanity at its worst and its finest, but you only have to see them for seven minutes,” he said.

In Frank’s latest foray into community involvement he’s inherited the mantle of Bucks GM from Dave Gurney. “I’ve been following him around like the sorcerer’s apprentice,” Frank said. “There’s a lot of skepticism that someone who was raised on cricket and rugby can do anything about baseball.”

Empty-nesters, Frank and Colleen have been Bucks host parents for the past two seasons. They’ve had a very good experience, becoming more and more involved as fans and supporters of the summer team.

Located a stone’s throw from school, Frank and Colleen’s house was often a thoroughfare for Island schoolchildren. “Kids actually used to walk through our house,” he said. “Soon after we moved in, kids would open the door and ask, ‘Are you the new teacher? Do you have a kid we can play with?’”

02/19/2016

Standing outside the high school gym near the display case that holds seven 1,000-point game basketballs and across from the Hall of Fame case, Coach Jay Card Jr. described what motivated him to excel as a coach and player during his own distinguished varsity basketball career.

“Children walk down this hallway everyday and they look into that case, and think to themselves, ‘I’d like to have my name on that wall,’” he said. “Those names are an inspiration.”

This year’s varsity basketball team has two inspiring seniors — one of whom has his name on a game ball in the display case — Billy Boeklen and Tristan Wissemann.

Coach Card’s Indians have clinched a spot in the playoffs that start on Saturday, but their poise, respect for each other and for their rivals shows that these nine teenagers, led by the two seniors, are special.

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO | Billy Boeklen

Billy is a 6-foot guard who averages 16.2 points per game. He grew up on the Island with his younger brother, Danny, his dad, Bill, a captain on the South Ferry, and his mom, Mary. Mary credits countless hours spent with Uncle Jeff — “a member of the tall part of the family” — for forming the solid base of Billy’s basketball skills, along with an awkwardly located basketball hoop outside their house that was so hard to hit, “I think it helped him become a better shooter.”

Anyone you ask (including Billy) says that there’s nothing he would rather do than play basketball. So it was surprising to hear him say that when he first played on a team, he wasn’t sure it was for him.

“It was just something all my friends were doing,” he said. “I came back the next year and started getting closer to my coaches, learning how to play the game, and then I couldn’t stop.”

Billy is responsible for one of the most exciting moments in Shelter Island basketball history, when the varsity faced Greenport in the 2014 county championship game. Assistant Coach Jim Colligan recalled that Billy, who was playing JV, came up and scored 21 points to boost the Indians to the county championship. The Greenport coach was so impressed, he dubbed Billy “The X-Factor.”

Billy’s favorite memory is this year’s the East Rockaway game, where his teammate Tristan scored his 1,000th point playing varsity basketball.

Billy will play college basketball next year, either at SUNY Cortland or Brockport, and plans to study physical education and athletic training.

The draw of basketball for Billy has always been the chance to play with others. From the days when he played on the Fiske Field courts from sunrise to sunset, to the off-Island travel teams that provided him an even higher level of competition, “I made good relationships and connections with other schools and other places,” he said. “Every team we play, I have friends there.”

Friends are different on Shelter Island Billy said. “Here, your friends are more like family,” he said. “The relationships you make here, you will have forever. I loved growing up here.”

Tristan Wissemann is 6 feet 4 inches tall and averages 23.3 points per game,the highest in the county. He is one of seven Shelter Island basketball players in the history of the program to score 1,000 points, one of three (the others are Walter Richards and Cori Cass) to do so in three years of varsity play, and is the third highest-scoring Island player of all time.

Tristan’s father, Gunnar Wissemann, works at Sylvester Manor and Tristan grew up in the Caretaker’s Cottage on the Manor property. His mother, Jennifer, is principal of the Oysterponds Elementary School.

An intelligent and unflappable player, he actually enjoys receiving the on-court verbal abuse known as trash-talk. At least part of the credit goes to Jennifer, who played defense with him when he was much shorter. “She’d say, ‘I’m going to be on you like white on rice,’” Tristan said. “She was very competitive.”

He liked sports, including baseball, but around 9th grade his interest in basketball pushed all others aside. “I like the pace of basketball,” he said. “It keeps my attention.”

It was about this time, his mother said, that Tristan found out about tryouts for a travel team and was soon playing with kids from all over the Northeast in a super competitive league. “It was the best thing he ever did,” Jennifer said. “We just sat back, he did all this on his own.”

Gunnar confirmed that he had also played basketball for the Shelter Island High School team and had even scored a point — once.

Tristan suffered a serious setback in 2014 when he severely broke his ankle playing in a travel team game going for a layup. “I made it, but I came down on someone’s foot.” It was June of his 10th grade year; he was crushed as his team went off to a national tournament that summer without him.

When Tristan’s junior year season started that fall, his ankle was healed, but his confidence was not. His mother credits Amy Mobius, a physical therapist at Project FIT, with helping Tristan recover the confidence to land on that ankle. “She took him into the gym and worked with him right under the hoops,” Jennifer said.

“Other people were definitely working harder than me, I was just sitting there,” Tristan said. “So I came back and surprised myself a little bit.”

Next year Tristan will attend SUNY New Paltz, and will play basketball. He thinks he might study education. “I have a lot of cool teachers here,” he said. “I’d like to see what a teacher could do in a student’s life.”

Growing up on the Island, Tristan likes knowing pretty much everyone he meets, everyplace he goes. Still, he’s happy at the prospect of blending in a little bit at college. “In a place that’s big, where people don’t know each other, I’m excited to be in the mix,” he said.

02/17/2016

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO | Red-Cooked Pork, just in time to celebrate Lunar new Year.

Published in the Shelter Island Reporter on February 18, 2016

When my mother was a high school student in New York City in the early 1950s, she got out of school one day by saying she was Chinese and had to celebrate the Lunar New Year.

My mother has dark hair and olive skin, but she is not Chinese. Even today, she has a lot of chutzpah, which is not a Chinese word, but sounds like it could be.

Chinese New Year is a great holiday as more and more Americans are discovering. Going home, eating dumplings, setting off firecrackers — the Lunar New Year has it all.

Sixty-five years later, my mother was vindicated when the New York public schools made it an official school holiday in 2016.

Welcome to the Year of the Monkey, which started on February 8 — the 10 day celebration that straddles the Presidents’ Day weekend and ends on the 18th with Valentine’s Day falling somewhere in the middle. Since red is the color of love in the West and an auspicious color in Chinese tradition, what better time to cook something that is both red and Chinese?

Red is also the color of communism, so it’s not surprising that red-cooked pork, a wonderful caramelized braise of pork belly and aromatic spices, is said to have been Chairman Mao’s favorite dish.

I am not a communist nor an admirer of the man who caused the deaths of millions of people, but I do like red-cooked pork, a dish that transforms a humble and inexpensive cut of meat to a gloriously tender dish with a silky sauce.

It also fills your kitchen with the pleasant and distinctive fragrance of star anise, ginger and cinnamon.

1. Put the pork belly in a wok containing enough boiling water to cover the meat completely and boil for 20 minutes, removing any scum that forms on the surface of the water with a slotted spoon.

2. Drain the pork belly and set it aside to cool. Strain and reserve 2 cups of the water. When the pork belly is cool, cut it into 1 and 1/2 inch cubes.

3. Melt the sugar and the vegetable oil in a wok over medium high heat. Continue heating until the sugar is tan, not dark brown, about 3 minutes. Add the cubed pork belly and cook it in the caramelized sugar about 8 minutes until it is dark brown, but don’t let it scorch.

4. Add the garlic, ginger, cinnamon, scallions, star anise, dark soy sauce, soy sauce, wine and par-boiling water to the pork. Cover the wok and simmer over low heat for about 90 minutes. Stir the meat periodically and make sure the pork does not stick to the wok and burn.

5. When the meat is tender, set it aside and turn the heat to medium high. Cook the sauce for another 10 minutes until it is reduced to a smooth consistency.

This dish improves when it is refrigerated. Store the pork separately from the sauce, skim the excess fat from the sauce once it cools, and combine the pork and sauce before heating it to serving temperature.

In a world where fitness is found in eucalyptus-scented warehouses with rows of heart-monitoring, cadence-counting electronic devices and throbbing music you feel in your chest, FIT stands apart. Like all things Island, we do gym a little differently here.

Sure, other fitness centers have interactive stationary bikes equipped with features that reproduce the visual and physical conditions you would encounter if you decided to ride a stage of the Tour de France. But they don’t have the inspiring view from the window by the ellipticals at FIT after 11 a.m. weekdays after Labor Day. That’s when recess takes place; a fascinating hour of Shelter Island’s schoolchildren playing ball, speed-walking around the track and hanging like orangutans from the playground equipment.

San Francisco’s highly-rated CrossFit gym has a shirts-on policy for men and women to keep dripping sweat under control and to ensure theirs is not a place where, says the founder, “a few super-jacked people can show off their six-packs.” Here at FIT no dress code is enforced, with many members preferring long sleeved shirts with cuffs and pants that require ironing. Six-packs are for afterwards.

At fitness centers off-Island, cranked-to-max headphones blare Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift. At FIT on a late December morning, a regular slowly pedaled her stationary bicycle wearing an elaborately stitched Christmas sweater, immersed in a hardback book.

At fancy health clubs in New York and L.A., celebrity stalking is a sport for some and a hazard for the famous. Here at Project FIT, even Town Supervisor Jim Dougherty can be seen exercising in khakis and a driving cap, without interference from the paparazzi.

There are no on-site aerobics or Zumba classes at FIT, and given my history with drop-in group classes, that suits me just fine. I single-handedly injured an entire aerobics class in 1980 when the instructor asked each of us to take turns leading the group in a move. As Donna Summer belted out “Hot Stuff,” I executed a lunge that hyperextended my knee, and the knees of my classmates as they unwisely followed.

A few Saturdays ago at FIT, two kids in their 20s who seemed to know each other from high school reconnected over by the treadmills.

“I’m here visiting my folks for the holidays.”

“Didn’t see you last night, I must have left before you got there.”

“Where are you living?”

“Brooklyn, how about you?”

“Brooklyn, Nice! I’m in Queens, Astoria.”

Meanwhile, on a stationary bike, a self-styled “Codger” revealed the secret exercise motivation coming through his earbuds. “I listen to Donald Trump stump speeches, which activates my muscles and blood in ways no exercise could,” he said. “If Trump stays the course I may be able to fulfill my dream of competing in Senior Mixed Martial Arts.”

Health clubs are a big and profitable business in most places. Project FIT is not big and by intention, just breaks even. It was the invention of Lila Piccozzi and Maura Regan, seniors in the Shelter Island High School Class of 1998, who wanted to leave the fitness facilities at the school in better shape than they found them. The two of them brought the community together around their idea, raised the bar to include a fitness room, tennis courts and ball field improvements, and gathered over $250,000 to make it happen.

Ten years later, someone realized that Project FIT, although operated by the Town, had been constructed without a building permit and opened without a certificate of occupancy. I have to admire a gym that so closely recreates the experience of hanging out in a friend’s garage that it can operate for years without anyone asking if the paperwork is in order. I wouldn’t think of asking if the Health Department inspected the premises before eating dinner at a neighbor’s house. Would you?

There are 34,000 health clubs in the U.S. and 54 million Americans are members. But 437 people — an increase of almost 30 percent in 2015 — belong to the most remarkable little fitness center of all, Shelter Island’s own Project FIT.

From the beginning, Project FIT has been equal parts socializing and exercising. Wondering how the girls basketball team did in their Friday night game? Find out at Project FIT on Saturday morning. Curious about how the Bucks offense will fare against the North Fork Ospreys in a summertime Friday-night Hamptons League face-off? Hear the scouting reports from the (large!) guys when they do their weight training before the game.

FIT aides Katherine Doroski, Janine Mahoney and Katherine Brewer, and Director Garth Griffin know that sometimes the socializing can get pretty intense, “Some stay for fifteen minutes after closing time talking,” said Griffin, “I have to shoo them out.”

02/04/2016

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO | Shelter Island’s newest councilwoman, Mary Dudley, at home with two of her four rescued dogs.

Mary Dudley is a busy, organized and practical woman, who has spent most of the last 30 years working as a paralegal in upstate New York. She’s lived and worked on Shelter Island for three-and-a-half years, and three weeks ago was sworn in as the newest Town Board member, after being selected unanimously from a field of nine.

Oh, she also bakes her own bread.

And although she likes to run a tight ship in the home she shares with her fiancé Arthur Luecker, a local builder, several times a day all hell breaks loose at feeding time.

Mary doesn’t just adopt dogs, she rescues them, and her kind of dog ownership is an extreme sport, “When it’s time to feed them, everyone is barking and running around,” she said.

“These guys were lab dogs,” she added, introducing two aged beagles named Pumpkin and Sherman. Gretchen is a potato-dumpling of a dachshund, 15 years old and entirely unaware of her advanced age. Nick is a four-year-old retired racing greyhound with heart-melting brown eyes.

“I’ve had seven rescued greyhounds over the years,” Mary said.

As for things with wings, Mary is also an enthusiastic bird watcher, with four feeders fully stocked “and I make my own suet.”

She plans to start raising chickens in the yard.

Mary grew up in a large family in Syracuse, spending summers at her grandparents’ cabin on Sandy Pond, a bay off Lake Ontario. With a tribe of cousins, nieces and nephews, Mary fished off the dock, took out the rowboats and picked raspberries.

Her father, Robert, was a metallurgical engineer and her mother, Anne, worked for Bristol-Myers, eventually rising to become an executive of the company. Mary is the third of seven sisters, one living in Syracuse, one in Rochester, one in Mississippi, one in Florida and two in New Jersey.

A lifelong lover of animals, she studied animal husbandry in college and thought at first she would work with horses doing barn management, breeding and riding lessons. But after teaching riding for a time, she changed direction. “It’s a difficult field to get into,” she said, “and my friends who did break in lived in trailers at the barn.”

Mary’s first husband worked for McDonnell Douglas, an aerospace manufacturing company. In 1981 the couple moved to Saudi Arabia where he worked teaching members of the Royal Saudi Air Force how to maintain the F15 Eagles the kingdom had just purchased from the United States.

For four years, Mary lived with the spouses and families of other expatriate Americans in a large apartment complex with workout rooms, a swimming pool and a bus to take them to the area’s lone grocery store.

Inside the compound, Mary could wear jeans, but outside, the Saudi idea of female modesty was the rule. Women could not drive and had to wear an abaya or a long skirt. “There were religious police,” Mary said, “and they would hit you with a stick.”

“It’s a completely different way of life, very enclosed,” she added. She described riding down a street of private homes, lined with walls 12 feet high to preserve the privacy of the residents.

Alcohol was forbidden, but inside the compound it was DIY and the grocery store was well stocked with the sugar and concentrated grape juice needed for winemaking. “For New Year’s Eve once we went to Bahrain because you could drink there,” Mary said.

Every six months they were able to travel outside Saudi Arabia and Mary and her husband made two-round-the-world trips during those leaves, visiting the Arctic Circle by train and spending a week in Japan.

By the late 1980s she was single again and moved back to Syracuse. She began a career as a paralegal and over the years worked at a variety of law firms, mostly doing litigation work, along with some real estate and estate planning. For a decade starting around 2001, she worked for a pair of trial attorneys, both senior partners who she described as “high-demand, well-respected litigators” and “curmudgeons.”

When she was in her 20s, Mary had spent three summers working at Johnny Appleseed, a children’s summer camp in New Hampshire, and over the years she occasionally thought of the extremely hirsute guy from Yonkers named Arthur, who worked there too. In the late 1970s, Mary and Arthur were friends.

Thirty years later, something inspired Mary to find him, which she did through a mutual friend. When they spoke on the phone, Mary said she immediately remembered his voice, and when they met she determined he hadn’t changed a bit, even if the volume and configuration of his hair had. This time they were both single. “Go figure,” said Mary. “We just had to ride time until it happened.”

Arthur had been living on Shelter Island for decades and at his invitation, Mary drove down from Syracuse for the Beach Blast in September 2011 — her first Island experience. “I had to Google it,” she said. Soon Arthur traveled to Syracuse so Mary could show him how she lived. “I took him creek walking,” she said. “A lovely day hiking in the water and around the waterfalls.”

They decided to make a go of it on the Island, where Arthur’s business is established. Mary took a job at Daniel Gale as an administrative assistant. “I had this immersion in Shelter Island real estate,” she said. “The issues, what people have to do to sell property and property values. It was a very nice job.”

She also joined the Fire Department Auxiliary in 2012 and has remained active, helping with the chicken barbeque, the egg hunt and other events.

Between Mary’s appointment as councilwoman and their engagement, the couple is congratulated by almost everyone they meet. Arthur confessed to occasional confusion as to which event the congratulators meant. They had to expedite the announcement of their plan to marry when it almost appeared in the Reporter before the couple had notified all of Mary’s sisters.

Mary admitted that although she hoped to be chosen to fill the spot on the Town Board created by the resignation of Ed Brown, she was surprised. “I didn’t expect it would go anywhere,” she said. “But I told Jim Dougherty, ‘There is a moving train and I’m trying to jump on.’”

She felt a shift in responsibility the day of her swearing in. “All of a sudden I took on a new perspective of things,” she said. “It’s one thing to say something should be done, but now it’s like I’m back at the law office trying to get things done.”

Mary described her approach to government, which promises to be a pragmatic one. “When an issue comes up, first you do the investigation to figure out if there actually is an issue.” When considering initiatives, she said she asks, “What’s the least cost solution, and what are the ramifications?”

The preservation of water quality and quantity will be a focus for her. She takes a long view of the issue. “I would like to plan things out so that 50 years from now people will say, ‘I’m happy they did that.’”

Lightning Round — Mary Dudley

What do you always have with you? A buck knife.

Favorite place on Shelter Island? The Goat Hill golf club at 7 a.m. all by myself, carrying my bag

Favorite place not on Shelter Island? St. Regis Falls in the Adirondacks

Last time you were afraid? When I was sworn in as a member of the Town Council.

Best day of the year on Shelter Island? Tumbleweed Tuesday, when all the summer people leave.

What exasperates you? I was a little exasperated about a typo in a Reporter story about me, because it said that I practice Japanese shibari, instead of shibori, which is a batik technique. [Shibari is a type of bondage art. The typo, in a web post, was quickly corrected.]

Favorite book? ‘Pride and Prejudice’ by Jane Austen

Favorite person, living or dead, who is not a member of the family? Queen Elizabeth I. I love how she persevered and survived.

Lily Brett is a rock journalist, essayist, author of seven novels with an international reputation and nothing in her background to prepare for life outside a city, let alone on a rural island.

Born in a German displaced persons camp in 1946, her parents were survivors of the Holocaust. When Lily was 2 years old, her family of three — all that remained of a once large and wealthy Polish family — emigrated to Australia.

Her parents found factory work. They didn’t have the means for a vacation, with one exception, Lily recalled. Her father paid a truck driver to transport them to a Jewish guesthouse an hour outside of Melbourne. Lily’s father was tied to the back of the truck while she and her mother rode in the cab with the driver, Lily’s mother yelling out the window to her father to confirm that he was still strapped in.

At the guesthouse, everyone stayed indoors throughout the day with the windows closed and played cards. “I thought this is what you do in the country,” Lily said.

Although she has learned to enjoy going outdoors, on Shelter Island with her husband, artist David Rankin, she’s often working.

Her last three novels were written entirely on Shelter Island, including “Lola Bensky,” based on her own experiences, which won France’s prestigious Prix Médicis Etranger in 2014.

She grew up with her parents and seven other Jewish families in a “terrace house:” eight rooms with one family in each room, one bathroom and one kitchen. She was the first person in the building to learn English and became a valued member of the community even as a young child.

“I thought it was fabulous,” she said. “I felt loved. There is something great about being 4 or 5 and being useful.”

Lily’s parents, particularly her mother, continued to mourn their family — all murdered in the Holocaust. Lily said they taught her that “we were so lucky to live in a country that was free of persecution, that gave us a chance, not at regaining any of the old life, but a chance of living in freedom.”

At 18, she was hired as a writer by Philip Frazer, one of the founders of the first Australian pop-music newspapers, “Go-Set.” It was 1965, rock and roll was taking the world by storm and Lily found herself interviewing superstars such as Jim Morrison, who she described as “cruel and indifferent,” and Jimi Hendrix, “a thoughtful, sensitive human being.” She added, “His hips stayed firmly in place throughout the interview.”

She covered the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, traveled extensively and developed an international reputation as a rock journalist.“I wanted my work to have a serious aspect to it,” she said. “I didn’t want it to be just frothy.”

Still it wasn’t exactly what her parents had in mind. “I was meant to be a doctor or a lawyer,” she said. “My dad said ‘better than Perry Mason.’ He dreamed of me doing good in the world.”

Lily met David Rankin when she was sent to interview David’s wife, Jennifer Rankin, a noted Australian poet who was terminally ill. Lily had been married for 10 years and had two children, Paris and Gypsy, who became friends with David’s daughter Jessica.

Soon Lily realized she had fallen in love. “I had a real gratitude that I found that sort of love,” she said, “And the most interesting person I had ever met.” They married in 1981.

In 1989, Lily and David and their children left Australia for New York. Their first experience of Shelter Island was in 1991, at the invitation of Philip Frazer, who, like them, had moved to New York, and Frazer’s wife, Cydney Pullman who had a home on the Island.

David immediately fell for the landscape, which reminded him of rural Australia. Unlike David, Lily had no experience of life outside the center of a city and wasn’t sure she wanted any. “Trees overwhelm me — too many trees,” she said. “I didn’t grow up with it. I never saw a vegetable growing.”

The first cottage they rented was infested with crickets, but they didn’t stand in the way of her work. “The owners saw me on the day we arrived. And then not until I emerged several months later … I think they thought David had murdered me.” She wrote her acclaimed novel, “Too Many Men,” that summer.

In 1995 when Lily learned she was shortlisted for a literary prize with a large cash award, David proposed a deal. “He said if you win this, let’s buy something on Shelter Island.” Assuming she wouldn’t win, Lily agreed, and forgot about it.

When she got a call from Australia saying she’d won, Lily prepared to renegotiate the deal with David. Too late. “As soon as he finished weeping with happiness,” she said, “I heard him on the phone with Shelter Island real estate broker, Cathie Perrin.”

As described by Lily, their search for Shelter Island property was the stuff of a real estate professional’s nightmares. After Cathie Perrin had driven them all over the Island, David told Lily, “You are not looking properly at things. You are not taking it seriously.”

They pulled up to a vine-choked acre of land on Midway Road near Wades Beach and Lily announced, “This is it.”

“You haven’t even stepped out of the car,” said David.

“I rolled the window down.”

“What’s so special about this place?”

“I feel it’s going to be sheltered from weather. And it’s a place we should be.”

The Island became essential to Lily’s creative productivity. “I don’t know that I could write anywhere else,” she said. “Everyone who knows my work knows Shelter Island. It’s given me another life.”

Her friendship with the late Cheryl Hannabury helped her understand what makes the Island community special, and different from urban life. One day, Lily and Cheryl were talking when they heard an emergency siren. “I said, ‘Oh, another ambulance,’” said Lily, “since it was a familiar sound in the city. But Cheryl said, ‘No, when you hear an ambulance on the Island, it means that one of us is in trouble.’”

Lily’s mother died at 64 of cancer and for years Lily grieved openly. “I think she would have been surprised and quite pleased,” said Lily. “Like most of us, she probably didn’t know how much I cared about her.”

Today, Lily’s father is 99 and living on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. “Your age follows you around,” she said. “I hate it when they give the year of your birth and a dash. This is just asking for trouble.”

Her parents’ legacy is to be as good a human being as you can. “It’s all about love,” she said “My parents told me that nothing is valuable except for love.”

LIGHTNING ROUND — LILY BRETT

What do you always have with you? A beautiful silver Star of David a reader gave me at a book event in Germany. I use it for my house keys.

Favorite place on Shelter Island? My study.

Favorite place not on Shelter Island? Caffé Dante on Macdougal Street in New York.

Last time you were afraid? I was born afraid. You cannot grow up with parents who were in a refugee camp and lost all their family and not be afraid.

Best day of the year on Shelter Island? Every day, especially if the electricity hasn’t gone out.